Andrew Edgar

This paper seeks to explore the attraction and the beauty of the contemporary athletic body. It will be suggested that a body shaped through muscular bulk and definition has come to be seen as aesthetically normative. This body differs from the body of athletes from the early and mid-twentieth century. It will be argued that the contemporary body is not merely the result of advances in sports science, but rather that it is expressive of certain meanings and values. The visual similarity of the contemporary athletic body and that of the comic book superhero suggests that both bodies carry a similar potential for narrative story-telling, and that their attraction is bound up with this narrative potential. The superhero and athlete live meaningful lives, pursuing clear and morally unambiguous goals. The aesthetic attraction of the body lies in its capacity to facilitate the articulation of a story of a meaningful life, and to do so in the face of the growing anomie and thus meaninglessness of life as experienced in contemporary society. Athleticism offers an illusion of meaning, serving to reproduce dominant justificatory narratives and social stereotypes. Yet, as an illusion of meaning, it may be challenged and negotiated, not least with respect to its bias towards a certain form of the male body. The female athletic body disrupts the illusion, opening up new existential possibilities, new ways of living and being, and thus new, and potentially disruptive, narratives.

This paper explores the implications that the construction and use of avatars in games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft have for our understanding of personal identity. It asks whether the avatar can meaningfully be experienced as a separate person, existing in parallel to the flesh and blood player. A rehearsal of Cartesian and Lockean accounts of personal identity constructs an understanding of the self that is challenged by the experience of online play. It will be argued that playful engagement in virtual worlds invites the participant to reflect upon the human being as embodied and social; qualities of which are marginalised by Descartes and Locke. The strangeness of this experience of virtual worlds confronts the player with a challenge to construct a coherent narrative of online life, of which treating the avatar as a separate person is a coherent option. This opens up the virtual world as an important space within which personal identity is explored, but one with complex implicati...

As I pass the editorship of Health Care Analysis to the very capable hands of Dr. John Coggon, I can perhaps be indulged in a few moments of reflection on the last 8 years. I have strived to make the journal a forum within which scholars can articulate a diverse range of concerns about health care, both from a theoretical perspective, and from a practical one. The journal has attracted contributions from around the world, and from both established scholars and, I am proud to say, young scholars just beginning their careers, but with new and exciting contributions to make.Reviewing the papers I have published, I see that a number of long-standing concerns have received new and profound treatments. These include the nature of health and wellbeing; the problem of limiting access to health care and securing justice; the challenges that new technologies, not least in reproductive and genetic medicine, pose; questions of patient autonomy and empowerment; and the roles and responsibilities of

Hermeneutics is the exploration of the process of textual interpretation. As such, it has long been recognised as an important component within the humanities and social sciences, whether one deals with actual texts or with other the products of meaningful human activity, including social actions and utterances. Here, we offer a brief overview of the contribution that hermeneutics might make to the philosophy of sport. If sports and sporting events are seen to be the results of meaningful human interactions, then they are meaningful phenomena that lend themselves to interpretation. It can thus be argued that a hermeneutics of sport is a valid and important discipline, worthy of consideration and development. We offer a review of the nature and history of hermeneutics in general, briefly exploring the place of key figures such as Schleiermacher, Heidegger, Gadamer and Riceour, as well as key concepts such as that of the hermeneutic circle. In addition, we suggest the importance of a hermeneutics of suspicion, grounded in the work of Marx, Freud and Nietzsche. In the second part of our introduction, we briefly comment on each of the papers that comprise the current volume, and that reflect the diversity of approaches that a hermeneutics of sport might embrace.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a normative model for the assessment of the exercise of power by Big Pharma. By drawing on the work of Steven Lukes, it will be argued that while Big Pharma is overtly highly regulated, so that its power is indeed restricted in the interests of patients and the general public, the industry is still able to exercise what Lukes describes as a third dimension of power. This entails concealing the conflicts of interest and grievances that Big Pharma may have with the health care system, physicians and patients, crucially through rhetorical engagements with Patient Advocacy Groups that seek to shape public opinion, and also by marginalising certain groups, excluding them from debates over health care resource allocation. Three issues will be examined: the construction of a conception of the patient as expert patient or consumer; the phenomenon of disease mongering; the suppression or distortion of debates over resource allocation

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that developments in transhumanist technologies may have upon human cultures, and to do so by exploring a potential debate between Habermas and the transhumanists. Transhumanists, such as Nick Bostrom, typically see the potential in genetic and other technologies for positively expanding and transcending human nature. In contrast, Habermas is a representative of those who are fearful of this technology, suggesting that it will compound the deleterious effects of the colonisation of the lifeworld, further constraining human autonomy and undermining the meaningfulness of the lifeworld by expanding the technological control and manipulation of humanity. It will be argued that these opposed positions are grounded in fundamentally different understandings of the consequences of scientific and technological advance. On one level, the transhumanists remain confident that the lifeworld has within it the resources necessary to find meaning and purpose in a society deeply infused by genetic technology. Habermas disagrees. On another level, the difference is articulated by Horkheimer and Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment, primarily by challenging what may be understood as a Baconian faith in science as a project for the domination of nature. While the transhumanists broadly embrace this faith, Habermas returns to something akin to Horkheimer and Adorno’s pessimistic scepticism

In the Olympic Art Competitions (1912–1948) Pierre de Coubertin expresses his conception of both sport and art as instruments of moral renewal. In this paper, this conception is criticised for failing to appreciate art and sport as necessary manifestations of modernism. The Art Competitions were informed by a traditionalist aesthetic, and thus played a highly conservative role within Olympism. A modernist art about sport, in contrast, would have been a source of critical reflection, potentially protecting the Olympic movement from corrupting exploitation by commercial and nationalistic interests. The conclusion defends the need for Cultural Olympiads, as a source of such critical reflection, that are at once modernist in conception and yet, unlike their current expression, are centrally about sport.